Korridorium

♫ New in the Area ♫

35/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. Once again. It’s almost as if I do it anew every day, step­ping into the same cor­ri­dor repeat­edly: the one lead­ing to the phi­los­o­phy fac­ulty. But is that even pos­si­ble? No. It just seems that way. The self is no longer the one from yes­ter­day, and even less so from last year. And although the cor­ri­dor looks like the one I know and is very famil­iar to me—complete with the scuff marks left by the metal fil­ing cab­i­nets on the tiles when the sec­re­tary’s office moved, and includ­ing the stale smell from the time when smok­ing was still allowed here—it also can­not be the same one as yes­ter­day.

The illu­sion is per­fect. I could swear that I’ve already taken these exact steps here before, that these exact thoughts have crossed my mind. Even at gun­point, I could not be forced to per­ceive all of this as new and unspoiled. Although: in a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion or know­ing that I am enter­ing this cor­ri­dor for the last time and will lose my life in a few moments, maybe then?

For, as the ancient say­ing goes, “One can­not step into the same cor­ri­dor twice. Even the souls rise, as it were, from the cor­ri­dors by exha­la­tions.”

Her­a­cli­tus: